Thursday, April 18, 2019

The Long Weekend

Sometimes you have one of those weeks where almost everything goes wrong. Or maybe you prefer the mantra that "everything happens in threes." Last weekend was one of those......

All started well on a beautiful Friday spring afternoon as we departed for a weekend horse show away from home with my friend Molly. The horse was at the show already and all we had to do was get there on Friday evening, ready to show on Saturday morning. Traffic was light for a Friday rush hour (one of the joys of country living) but we were chatting so much that we missed our turn off the interstate. But Molly knew another way, so all was well or so we thought. Looking at the bright side, we had plenty of gas and saw some spots of Virginia we'd never ventured to before. We both missed a left hand turn that would have gotten to our destination about a half hour later than schedule but we arrived instead a full hour and a half late.

The rains have hit Virginia hard again this year, and when we finally did make it to the show we encountered a sea of mud. My truck almost got stuck in the mud as we parked the trailer only to discover that it did not intend to come out of four-wheel-drive under any circumstances. Driving down a major road in 4-wheel low is not recommended under. We drove 25 miles an hour to get to our hotel only to find that we were at the wrong hotel. A call back home, a quick Internet search, and we figured out a trick to disengage the 4-wheel low gear, hoping that we would not encounter this problem again when we had to go back into the sea of mud to hook the trailer up on Sunday. And we found a new hotel.

When it was time to leave we asked someone else to drive the truck out of the mud (just in case) and all was well in the 4-wheel low department. Dodged a bullet - or so we thought.

Bad storms were coming and we were hoping to get home before the rain hit. We were a half hour from the farm when suddenly a ringing light appeared on the dashboard. This was new. About 10 minutes later another ringing light appeared. At this point we decided to get off the main interstate to the secondary road just in case. The rains started coming but we were getting closer to home. We were about six miles from the farm when suddenly I had no power - with the gas pedal down to the floorboard I was going maybe 30 miles an hour. Then I lost all power, sitting on a curve in a road that people routinely drive 55 miles an hour on with my horse in tow.

As we pulled off to side as much as we possibly could the rains really hit. Suddenly two guys appeared and offered to help by making sure that no one rear ended me coming around the curve. Called the hubby, called the two truck and both came quickly to the rescue while the two local men helped with traffic. We were able to unhook the trailer and using my old truck we got the horse home. The truck was towed and later fixed and the two men who helped me will be receiving their bottles of Kentucky Bourbon this weekend.